outlaw cinema: how three pairs of “fugitive lovers” changed the course of movie history By eddie muller For a glimmering moment in the anything-seemed-possible 1960s, Jean-Luc Godard was going to direct Bonnie and Clyde. To screenwrit- ers David Newman and Robert Benton, it made sublime, subversive sense. They were devotees of Godard’s À bout de souffle (Breath- less, 1960), the most startling example of France’s nouvelle vague, the whirlwind of filmmaking innovation that blew from the pages of writers demurred, claiming that bad Texas weather would play hell Cahiers du cinéma magazine to touch aspiring directors all around with the filming. Godard dismissed them with his now-famous retort: “I the world. Newman and Benton, feature writers for Esquire, were so speak to you of cinema and you speak to me of meteorology?” invigorated by Godard’s film (as well as François Truffaut’sShoot the It was Truffaut’s friend Leslie Caron who mentioned the Bonnie and Piano Player, 1960, and Jules and Jim, 1962) they wanted to create Clyde script to Warren Beatty. The actor believed fame and fortune was a cinematic storm of their own, this side of the Atlantic. In much the to be gained making an art house film for the American mass market—de- same way American Patricia Franchini (Jean Seberg) infatuates young spite his having learned precisely how not to do it with Mickey One (1965), Parisian gangster Michel Poiccard (Jean-Paul Belmondo) in Breathless, a black-and-white nouvelle vague–inspired flop directed by Arthur Penn. It the cinephilia of late fifties’ Paris crossed the Atlantic to inspire these “All you need had bewildered exhibitors and the few paying customers it attracted. impressionable, ambitious New Yorkers. for A movie Taking on the role of Bonnie and Clyde’s producer as well as its star, What was it in Godard’s revolutionary work that Newman and Ben- Beatty made the film a hit by wrapping its controversial elements—blatant ton wanted to bring to America? is A gun And amorality, sexuality, and orgasmic violence—in the latest edition of trendy Above all, attitude. Beyond its revelatory revamping of film tech- A girl.” Hollywood glamour. As outlaw sex symbols, Beatty and costar Faye Dun- nique, the lasting legacy of Breathless is its hoped-up depiction of un- away outdid Belmondo and Seberg, inspiring a revival of 1930s fashion in tethered, disaffected youth. Its underlying existential philosophy—the jean-luc godard the midst of the dressed-down Vietnam era. only meaning in life is in the living itself—is recklessly, but lovingly, Although the final film owes as much to the influence of Walker Evans grafted onto the skeletal structure of 1940s noir films cherished by and Akira Kurosawa as it does Jean-Luc Godard, Bonnie and Clyde (1967) Godard and Truffaut (who wrote Breathless’s story). Newman and retains several direct links to Breathless: its influence can be felt in the ed- Benton sensed the rising of a restless youth culture in America, and iting of Bonnie’s bedroom scenes, where nervous jump-cuts suggest her grafted their representative take on callow, rebellious outlaws onto sexual restlessness; in the headlong driving scenes, conveying the exhila- the Depression-era tale of bandits Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow. ration of the open road; in the exciting acceptance of “mistakes,” as when Secondly, they wanted to emulate the nouvelle vague style, to a fight spills out of frame and the camera must scurry to catch up. bring something bold and bracing to American films. InBreathless , As if to openly declare its kinship to Godard’s film,Bonnie and Clyde Godard had done for the language of cinema what the Beat poets replicates the scene in Breathless where Michel and Patricia hide from the had done for literature—liberate it from the tyranny of tradition for police in a movie theater, the onscreen dialogue offering ironic counter- tradition’s sake. Like the Beats, Godard’s work angered and inspired point to the characters’ situation. There’s even an odd (accidental?) refer- in equal measure, a sure sign that it was breaking new ground. Bosley ence near the film’s end, when the lens in Clyde’s sunglasses pops loose, Crowther, resident critic-curmudgeon of the New York Times, sniffed just as Belmondo’s does in Breathless. that “sordid is really a mild word for [the] pile-up of gross indecen- In its final form, however,Bonnie and Clyde was closer to old-school cies” that comprised Breathless. Hollywood filmmaking than to the Frenchnouvelle vague. Its ground- Truffaut read an early draft of Newman and Benton’s Bonnie and breaking status was due entirely to its romantic glorification of criminal Clyde script, and met with the writers in 1964, when he was in New behavior—essentially killing off the last vestiges of Hollywood’s once- York to interview Alfred Hitchcock for his book, Hitchcock/Truffaut. venerable Production Code. After Bonnie and Clyde, cinematic sex and leFt: From top to bottom, Gun Crazy He arranged a screening of an American film that he believed should (1950), Breathless (1960), Bonnie and violence would never be the same. inform their final draft:Gun Crazy (1950). Truffaut suggested his col- Clyde (1967). And neither would American film criticism. Many people believe the league Godard—who was at the screening—should direct. Godard, ever aBove: Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty success of Bonnie and Clyde was at least partially due to an ecstatic re- the guerilla-director, quickly offered a rapid-fire shooting schedule. The in Bonnie and Clyde (1967). view in the New Yorker by then-fledgling critic Pauline Kael. Her gushing 62 63 outlaw cinema: how three pairs of “fugitive lovers” changed the course of movie history By eddie muller For a glimmering moment in the anything-seemed-possible 1960s, Jean-Luc Godard was going to direct Bonnie and Clyde. To screenwrit- ers David Newman and Robert Benton, it made sublime, subversive sense. They were devotees of Godard’s À bout de souffle (Breath- less, 1960), the most startling example of France’s nouvelle vague, the whirlwind of filmmaking innovation that blew from the pages of writers demurred, claiming that bad Texas weather would play hell Cahiers du cinéma magazine to touch aspiring directors all around with the filming. Godard dismissed them with his now-famous retort: “I the world. Newman and Benton, feature writers for Esquire, were so speak to you of cinema and you speak to me of meteorology?” invigorated by Godard’s film (as well as François Truffaut’sShoot the It was Truffaut’s friend Leslie Caron who mentioned the Bonnie and Piano Player, 1960, and Jules and Jim, 1962) they wanted to create Clyde script to Warren Beatty. The actor believed fame and fortune was a cinematic storm of their own, this side of the Atlantic. In much the to be gained making an art house film for the American mass market—de- same way American Patricia Franchini (Jean Seberg) infatuates young spite his having learned precisely how not to do it with Mickey One (1965), Parisian gangster Michel Poiccard (Jean-Paul Belmondo) in Breathless, a black-and-white nouvelle vague–inspired flop directed by Arthur Penn. It the cinephilia of late fifties’ Paris crossed the Atlantic to inspire these “All you need had bewildered exhibitors and the few paying customers it attracted. impressionable, ambitious New Yorkers. for A movie Taking on the role of Bonnie and Clyde’s producer as well as its star, What was it in Godard’s revolutionary work that Newman and Ben- Beatty made the film a hit by wrapping its controversial elements—blatant ton wanted to bring to America? is A gun And amorality, sexuality, and orgasmic violence—in the latest edition of trendy Above all, attitude. Beyond its revelatory revamping of film tech- A girl.” Hollywood glamour. As outlaw sex symbols, Beatty and costar Faye Dun- nique, the lasting legacy of Breathless is its hoped-up depiction of un- away outdid Belmondo and Seberg, inspiring a revival of 1930s fashion in tethered, disaffected youth. Its underlying existential philosophy—the jean-luc godard the midst of the dressed-down Vietnam era. only meaning in life is in the living itself—is recklessly, but lovingly, Although the final film owes as much to the influence of Walker Evans grafted onto the skeletal structure of 1940s noir films cherished by and Akira Kurosawa as it does Jean-Luc Godard, Bonnie and Clyde (1967) Godard and Truffaut (who wrote Breathless’s story). Newman and retains several direct links to Breathless: its influence can be felt in the ed- Benton sensed the rising of a restless youth culture in America, and iting of Bonnie’s bedroom scenes, where nervous jump-cuts suggest her grafted their representative take on callow, rebellious outlaws onto sexual restlessness; in the headlong driving scenes, conveying the exhila- the Depression-era tale of bandits Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow. ration of the open road; in the exciting acceptance of “mistakes,” as when Secondly, they wanted to emulate the nouvelle vague style, to a fight spills out of frame and the camera must scurry to catch up. bring something bold and bracing to American films. InBreathless , As if to openly declare its kinship to Godard’s film,Bonnie and Clyde Godard had done for the language of cinema what the Beat poets replicates the scene in Breathless where Michel and Patricia hide from the had done for literature—liberate it from the tyranny of tradition for police in a movie theater, the onscreen dialogue offering ironic counter- tradition’s sake.